Beatus

I’m writing this not out of fear that I won’t live to tell the story, nor that I feel that I’m in grave danger. I write this to chronicle the events that have happened, and to seek out possible answers to the reasons behind the events. Now please be aware that I’m not the drinking type, and I have never touched hallucinogenics. Not berating those that do just putting out there that they’ve had no effects in what I experienced. This is how it all began.

I live down a dead end road, right off the highway, outside of a small East Texas town. I was in my early twenties and living alone at the time. I’ve always been one for the outdoors so I’d always find a way to make time for a daily walk down the road just to get some fresh air out away from everything. That being said I was not one for the Texas heat, so once the thermometers started rising my walks would move later and later into the night. Now I’ve been doing this for years and and I’ve never anything truly out of the ordinary. There’s been plenty of run-ins with wild animals, the occasional unseen rustles in the leaves, branches breaking off trees seemingly without reason, and even the fog rolling in suddenly from the cool night air hitting the day long heated ground; but this I can just not seem to come up with rhyme or reason for.

Everything started out normal, as I made my way out into the night. I decided on 11:00pm after checking the weather showing clear skies and a temperature of 80 degrees. You might not consider that refreshing but after a day that passed 100 it was a welcome change. Once I made it to the road I felt a chill run through my body as my skin raised with goose bumps. Kind of odd since it didn’t seem the current weather would cause that kind of effect, but none the less I pressed on. I approached the first major hill in my road as the pine trees towered on either side of me leaving only a thin strip of the night sky left overhead. This is when I noticed the second thing that struck me as odd. As I started up the hill instead of my pace slowing to match the more strenuous steep incline, it quickened almost as if I was being pushed up the hill. This was a rather large, extremely steep hill I’ve always had a slow in pace and heavier breathing when I made the ascent. I almost tripped over my own feet as they seemed to hasten at their own will. After making it to the top I felt another chill, but wrote it off as just the breeze picking up. During my descent is when things started taking an even stranger turn.

I noticed that even though the breeze had picked up I heard no sound of it. I didn’t even hear the call of insects and frogs that were a common nightly occurrence. Everything was so silent, but still would be the last thing I called it. I felt the wind and I saw movement in the tree line, as leaves rolled along the ground and branches swayed, but it was just so quiet. About halfway down the hill I noticed a fog start billowing from the ground, but this fog wasn’t normal. It sat only about a foot off the ground, and I couldn’t see my feet through it. I looked out into the woods that flanked me from both sides and I notice streams of light flashing through the trees. Almost as if several bolts of lightning streaking through the forest horizontally parallel to the road carefully missing every tree. Once I made it to the bottom of the hill I stood at street light marking the entrance to a neighbor’s driveway. Even in the light I couldn’t see my feet through the fog and the lightning still traveled through the trees. My gaze turned towards the end of the road and I was met with a wall of darkness not more than 50ft ahead of me. This was not just a trick of the eyes due to coming under the light after being in the night. It was not a gradual darkening. It was a wall of complete darkness pitch black not allowing a single gleam of light to pass through.

At this point I decided I have had enough and turned around to make my way back home. I made my way back up the hill focusing on my shadow cast in front of me from the streetlight behind. It was the only thing visible that made sense at the time, until I noticed a change. Two spikes shot out from the shoulders of my shadow slowly arching outwards. After these two bonelike or tentacle like arches stopped, other spikes began moving downward from them until finally they looked like a shadow of what could be imagined of a skeletal dragon wing. After these forms finished growing they started to flap very slowly as if wings of some creature trying to slow its pace before hitting the ground. During this time the gaps between the spikes began to gradually fill up with what looked like feathers.

Remember this is all taken from looking at just a shadow so it wasn’t easy to discern. After the shadow became full and the ever changing growth stopped I felt a weight as if tugging at my shoulder blades. Till now I had been frozen in shock and fear of everything happening but I had the urge to look back at what was causing this. I slowly turned my head until I caught glimpse of these huge wings protruding from my back, their arches almost two feet above my head and their tips dragged along the road. A sharp pain almost bringing me to my knees started to spread through my spine as the wings suddenly retracted into my shoulder blades. I began to run the rest of the way up the hill until I heard an ominous voice call out seemingly to me from everywhere.

This was the first sound I’ve heard since making my way down the hill so it startled me as I slowed my pace to make out what it was saying. It was calling out Beatus over and over again progressively getting louder in an almost worried tone. Beatus, Beatus, BEATUS! I ran for my house not letting anything else distract me. I didn’t know what it was saying, what had happened, why it seemed it was calling me, what it all meant. I bolted over and down the hill and back to my home slamming and locking the door behind me. My little dog, barking in confusion from the sudden intrusion, ran to me as I slid to the ground almost as if checking me over to make sure I was ok. As soon as I got my bearings straight, the only thing on my mind was that word. I went to google translate and set it to detect language and typed in Beatus. It came up as Latin for Blessed.